McCain: really thinks Palin more trouble than a Pit Bull?

Wow! How word gets around.  According to the London Guardian:

"McCain has been telling friends in recent weeks that Palin is even more trouble than a pitbull"

Palin is not my favorite person, however, at one level it seems like a set up... make the woman look bad - Maybe if McCain would have been more careful in vetting her she wouldn't be in a situation where the entire world would be hearing she is worse than a pit bull.

Her campaign for vice-president could have pushed women in politics back twenty years - thank goodness Hilary was around to show that women in politics can be competent.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2008/nov/05/john-mccain-sarah-palin

Politics
McCain's verdict on Palin: more trouble than a pitbull
The British ambassador reveals what the defeated presidential candidate really thinks of his running mate


* Nicholas Watt
* guardian.co.uk,
* Wednesday November 05 2008 13.35 GMT


So now we know what John McCain really thinks of his running mate Sarah Palin – and that's not just because of the awkward body language between them during his concession speech in Phoenix, Arizona.

An exasperated McCain has been telling friends in recent weeks that Palin is even more trouble than a pitbull.

In one joke doing the rounds, the Republican presidential candidate has been asking friends: what is the difference between Sarah Palin and a pitbull? The friendly canine eventually lets go, is the McCain punchline.

McCain's joke is a skit on Palin's most famous line after she was picked as his surprise running mate. Palin delighted the Republican base when she said the only difference between a pitbull and a hockey mom was lipstick.

We owe the new glimpse into the tense McCain/Palin relationship to Sir Nigel Sheinwald, the British ambassador to Washington. Sheinwald recently wrote a lengthy assessment of McCain in a telegram that winged its way across the Atlantic to Whitehall.

The jaws of senior mandarins dropped when they read Sheinwald's account of McCain's thoughts on Palin which the ambassador reportedly picked up from a military friend of McCain's. The telegram was restricted to an even smaller group of people than usual for fear of another embarrassing leak. "We took one look at this and hid it away," one Whitehall source said...more

$5,000 hairdo and make up for Palin- paid by the GOP!

There are so many more serious things to write about. And I have other things to do, like read the assignment I've given my students for tomorrow...

However, I couldn't resist this one on Palin... after I saw the $5,000....


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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/alltherage/2008/10/palins-economic.html

Sarah Palin's $150,000 Wardrobe Malfunction?

Sarah Palin, small-town hockey mom and everywoman? More like Sarah Palin, pampered princess. Jeanne Cummings at Politico reports that the RNC’s monthly financial disclosure reports reveal that the Republican National Committee has spent tens of thousands of dollars on the vice presidential candidate's wardrobe and accessories since she was nominated, including $150,000 in September alone.

So it seems you can take the girl out of the beauty pageant, but you can’t take the beauty pageant out of the girl.

Palin's clothes came from retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Neiman Marcus and Barneys New York, and expenses included nearly $5,000 for hair and makeup. Maybe this is actually her one-woman economic stimulus plan. Lord knows the retail sector needs it.

Still, voters must find it unfathomable for Palin, who has been presented as a woman “like us,” to spend that kind of money on clothes in these difficult financial times, to see her speaking so passionately about Joe the Plumber while plumbing campaign coffers for Valentino jackets and pencil skirts. And yet, they’ve eaten it up, tittering on chat sites about Palin’s Kawasaki eyeglass frames and her Naughty Monkey red peep-toe pumps. (See our earlier take on Gov. Palin's style here.)

Palin’s spokewoman is saying this is much ado about nothing, that we should be talking about more important issues. But can you imagine the outcry if it were revealed that Hilary Clinton’s rainbow of pantsuits was paid for by campaign contributions? Or if college kids’ $50 checks to the Biden/Obama campaign were putting those men in $5,000 custom suits? (Obama’s suits are by Hart Schaffner Marx out of Chicago, and cost in the $1,500 range.)

In Palin’s defense, being a woman in the public eye has its own kind of pressures. And it’s unlikely she has been stepping off the campaign trail to join the ladies who lunch for shopping sprees at Neimans. Instead, she is probably working with a wardrobe stylist, who brings her things to try on and choose from. But the issue of clothing and hair expenses has always been a land mine for politicians (John Edwards' $400 haircuts), and someone should have been sensitive to that.

You also have to wonder how it feels, as a woman, to have everyone know that you really have been dressed up and trotted out like a beauty queen for the American public to wag their tongues at. Caribou Barbie indeed.

-- Booth Moore, Los Angeles Times Fashion Critic

Governor Palin's Mouth: and no, it isn't about lipstick

Maybe I should be focusing on the financial bailout.  But Sarah Palin just keeps getting my attention.  She puts all American females to shame.  What were McCain and Co. thinking?  I know they were pressured by the Religious Right - but why go to such an extreme? In terms of the Couric interview,  my undergraduates would have come up with much more coherent answers.

The truth is, Obama is more educated and aware of the world around him.  Yet, I just don't know if anyone will really help - after watching the presidential debate on Friday (September 26th) I am totally convinced our political campaigning has turned into a charade.

What we really need to do is be much more careful about how we choose our Congressmen and Senators.  Our current president may be lacking in intelligence, but it has been the Congress that has let us down repeatedly these past 8 years.  

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Palin is Ready! Please:  McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, that is simply not true.
Fareed Zakaria
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Oct 6, 2008

Will someone please put Sarah Palin out of her agony? Is it too much to ask that she come to realize that she wants, in that wonderful phrase in American politics, "to spend more time with her family"? Having stayed in purdah for weeks, she finally agreed to a third interview. CBS's Katie Couric questioned her in her trademark sympathetic style. It didn't help. When asked how living in the state closest to Russia gave her foreign-policy experience, Palin responded thus:

"It's very important when you consider even national-security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America. Where—where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to—to our state."

There is, of course, the sheer absurdity of the premise. Two weeks ago I flew to Tokyo, crossing over the North Pole. Does that make me an expert on Santa Claus? (Thanks, Jon Stewart.) But even beyond that, read the rest of her response. "It is from Alaska that we send out those …" What does this mean? This is not an isolated example. Palin has been given a set of talking points by campaign advisers, simple ideological mantras that she repeats and repeats as long as she can. ("We mustn't blink.") But if forced off those rehearsed lines, what she has to say is often, quite frankly, gibberish.

Couric asked her a smart question about the proposed $700 billion bailout of the American financial sector. It was designed to see if Palin understood that the problem in this crisis is that credit and liquidity in the financial system has dried up, and that that's why, in the estimation of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, the government needs to step in to buy up Wall Street's most toxic liabilities. Here's the entire exchange:

COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

This is nonsense—a vapid emptying out of every catchphrase about economics that came into her head. Some commentators, like CNN's Campbell Brown, have argued that it's sexist to keep Sarah Palin under wraps, as if she were a delicate flower who might wilt under the bright lights of the modern media. But the more Palin talks, the more we see that it may not be sexism but common sense that's causing the McCain campaign to treat her like a time bomb.

Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start. The next administration is going to face a set of challenges unlike any in recent memory. There is an ongoing military operation in Iraq that still costs $10 billion a month, a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan that is not going well and is not easily fixed. Iran, Russia and Venezuela present tough strategic challenges.

Domestically, the bailout and reform of the financial industry will take years and hundreds of billions of dollars. Health-care costs, unless curtailed, will bankrupt the federal government. Social Security, immigration, collapsing infrastructure and education are all going to get much worse if they are not handled soon.

And the American government is stretched to the limit. Between the Bush tax cuts, homeland-security needs, Iraq, Afghanistan and the bailout, the budget is looking bleak. Plus, within a few years, the retirement of the baby boomers begins with its massive and rising costs (in the trillions).

Obviously these are very serious challenges and constraints. In these times, for John McCain to have chosen this person to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, it is simply not true.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/161204

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McCain and Palin: Keeping Her Silent

What a great way to have an excuse to keep a woman silent:  hire someone incompetent!

also see "The Question is:  Can Palin give a coherent answer?"    and "Palin sends the cringe meter off the dial" from the London Independent

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McCain Camp Won't Let Palin Spin After Debate
Huffington Post
September 27, 2008

As the New York Times reported before Friday night's debate, Sarah Palin would not be providing post-debate spin for John McCain on the major TV networks:

After Barack Obama and John McCain stop talking on the debate stage Friday night, their surrogates will start spinning. But one high-profile supporter of Mr. McCain will be missing: his running mate Sarah Palin.[...]

Ms. Palin is scheduled to be at a debate-viewing event in Philadelphia, covered by a limited group of reporters, and she is not listed by any networks as a post-debate guest. On NBC and CBS, the former Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani will be commenting on the debate performances.

As The New Republic's Michael Crowley noted during the post-debate coverage, Palin's absence looked particularly awkward given the fact that Joe Biden was appearing all over the place:

Amusing moment on CNN just now. Wolf Blitzer, coming out of a commercial:

"We've been getting some emails from views out there wondering why we spent some time interviewing Joe Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee and not Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee. We would have loved to interview--we'd still love to interview Sarah Palin. Unfortunately we asked, we didn't get that interview...We're hoping that Sarah Palin will join us at some point down the road."

I'm told that Biden appeared on every major network tonight except ABC (which only turned him down because Palin wasn't available, on an equal-time sort of basis).

It's pretty strange when a candidate can't trust his own running mate to be out there spinning on his behalf.

for link to Huff Post article click here

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Watch Out for the Witches

Palin's Pastor Went on Witch Hunt in 1999 - See original article after David Waters post.

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Palin's Pastor Problem
Posted by David Waters on September 26, 2008 11:24 AM
Washington Post

In the fine, new American tradition of presidential campaign "pastor disasters," Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin might have one she can call her very own, complete with its own sensational YouTube video and stunned cable TV commentary. You knew it was coming -- but probably didn't suspect it would involve witchcraft.

Back in the fall of 2005, when Palin was running for governor of Alaska, a Kenyan pastor named Thomas Muthee preached several times at Wasilla Assembly of God, Palin's church home for more than two decades. In one service, Palin joined Moothy onstage while he prayed for her.

"We say grace to be reigned upon her in the name of Jesus," Muthee prayed while Palin bowed her head. "We are asking you as the body of Christ in this valley make a way for Sarah even in the political arena . . . Bring finances her way even for the campaign in the name of Jesus . . . Give her men and women who will buck her up in the name of Jesus . . . Oh, Father, use her to turn this nation the other way around . . . "

So far, not that unusual. Intercessory public prayer is a common and often powerful form of encouragement and blessing in evangelical or Pentecostal settings, for politicians or anyone else. But Muthee goes on: "In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, every form of witchcraft is what you rebuke. In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, father make away now."

Turns out, Muthee began his ministry with a witch hunt against a Kenyan woman he accused of causing car accidents through demonic spells, according to the Christian Science Monitor, which first reported the story in 1999. Muthee publicly declared the woman "a witch responsible for the town's ills, and order her to offer her up her soul for salvation or leave Kiambu . . . The woman fled."

This past June, in a speech at Wasilla AOG, Palin gave credit to Muthee for her 2006 election victory. In another now-famous YouTube video, Palin says, "As I was mayor and Pastor Muthee was here and he was praying over me . . . He said 'Lord make a way and let her do this next step.' And that's exactly what happened."

Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's designated derider and host of Countdown, was all over Palin's witch hunter connection last Friday: "The Palin's preacher problem: The minister who laid hands on her at the Wasilla Assembly of God in 2005, the one she credits with helping make her a governor, it turns out he makes Jeremiah Wright look like Father Flanagan of Boys Town," Olbermann said in his opening.

Here we go again. People who were in a lather about Wright's sermons know as little about African American church rhetoric and black liberation theology as people who are in a state about Muthee's sermons know about Pentecostal church rhetoric and "spiritual warfare."

As the CSM articles explained, Muthee's ministry is part of a larger "spiritual warfare" movement that uses "an in-depth research effort called 'spiritual mapping' to identify 'demonic forces,' break 'spiritual strongholds' holding communities in their groups, and bring people to Christ. It's also an effective way to put people in the pews and raise revenue.

Not to be too cynical, but Palin isn't the first politician to use (however sincerely) the power of the pulpit to advance her own political career, and she won't be the last. George W. Bush did it. Barack Obama and John McCain do it. You'd be hard-pressed to find a successful politician who hasn't done it.

We'll never know what Palin really believes about "demonic forces" and "spiritual warfare," at least not before Nov. 4. But there are plenty of "demonic" forces to be concerned about in this election -- the greed, fear and violence that are wreaking havoc on the economy, the health care system, the Middle East, our urban areas.

Can we forget the crazy preachers and try to get the candidates to focus on the serious problems?

for link to WaPo article click here

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Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA)
September 23, 1999, Thursday
Targeting cities with 'spiritual mapping,' prayer
BYLINE: Jane Lampman, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
SECTION: FEATURES; IDEAS; RELIGION; Pg. 15

BOSTON:  Can the 'spiritual DNA' of a community be altered?" That's the question posed in a Christian video called "Transformations."

Kenyan pastor Thomas Muthee is convinced that it can be. In 1988, he and his wife, Margaret, were "called by God to Kiambu," a notorious, violence-ridden suburb of Nairobi and a "ministry graveyard" for churches for years. They began six months of fervent prayer and research.

Pondering the message of Eph.6:12 ("For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world..."), they prayed to identify the source of Kiambu's spiritual oppression, Mr. Muthee says. Their answer: the spirit of witchcraft.

Their research into the community revealed that a woman called "Mama Jane" ran a "divination clinic" frequented by the town's most powerful people.

After months of prayer, Muthee held a crusade that "brought about 200 people to Christ." Their church in the basement of a grocery store was dubbed "The Prayer Cave," as members set up round-the-clock intercession. Mama Jane counterattacked, he says, but eventually "the demonic influence - the 'principality' over Kiambu - was broken," and she left town....

(c) Copyright 1999. The Christian Science Publishing Society

for complete Christian Science Monitor article click here

Bill Clinton is at it again: - positive thoughts on Sarah Palin

The talk has been that the Clintons didn't want Kerry to win so that Hillary could run in 2008.  Now Bill is working on Obama not winning... making it easier for Hillary's  in 2012.  As much as so many Democrats find Palin abominable, Bill thinks she is ok - doesn't think anyone should say bad things about her.  Guess he doesn't feel this way about Obama...

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September 23, 2008
Bill Clinton Says Americans Can Relate to the Palin Family

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bill Clinton said Monday that he understood why Gov. Sarah Palin is popular in the heartland: people relate to her.

“I come from Arkansas; I get why she’s hot out there,” Mr. Clinton said. “Why she’s doing well.”

Speaking to reporters before his Clinton Global Initiative meeting, Mr. Clinton described Ms. Palin’s appeal by saying, “People look at her, and they say: ‘All those kids. Something that happens in everybody’s family. I’m glad she loves her daughter and she’s not ashamed of her. Glad that girl’s going around with her boyfriend. Glad they’re going to get married.’ ”

Mr. Clinton said voters would think: “I like that little Down syndrome kid. One of them lives down the street. They’re wonderful children. They’re wonderful people. And I like the idea that this guy does those long-distance races. Stayed in the race for 500 miles with a broken arm. My kind of guy...”

“I get this,” Mr. Clinton said. “My view is, why say, ever, anything bad about a person? Why don’t we like them and celebrate them and be happy for her elevation to the ticket? And just say that she was a good choice for him and we disagree with them?...”

for link to complete AP/NYT article click here

Speaking from both sides of the mouth - on Palin

A colleague sent me this...

Palin can't take away my Harry Potter

To be honest, I haven't read Harry Potter - but just about everyone I know has read Harry - can you imagine the national uproar if Palin got her way and was able to ban Harry Potter!

Below is the reported list of books she wanted to ban at the Wasilla, Alaska Library

I am not so sure the list is accurate. It is very probable that the Harry Potter books were there, but there are a number that are questionable. Could Palin really be that far off base to want Shakespeare and Chaucer, and Websters Dictionary censored?




A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak

It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower

The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

Vagina Dentata* or the story of Sarah the Barracuda

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Mean Beauty Queen
September 5, 2008

Salon.com
by Michael Copperman

I listened on NPR yesterday as American and international feminists debated the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s Vice-Presidential nominee, and something was wrong. It wasn’t just the cognitive dissonance of hearing Feminists praise Ms. Palin for her historical candidacy, while Blueblood stay-at-home moms called in to attack Ms. Palin for taking on a campaign with a young Downs syndrome son. It wasn’t that nobody wanted to talk about book-banning. It wasn’t even the strangeness of the dozen-dozen left-leaning callers supporting the ban on speaking of Ms. Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy, a pass Republicans would never have offered the child of a Democratic candidate. Taking the high road is better than becoming the Hate-wing Radio Show Right, even if I would like to take a moment to appreciate the effectiveness of abstinence-only education, and to note that Bristol is hardly the poster-child for unwed teenage mothers, given that she’s upper-middle class and white and is marrying the father not exactly by choice (once Ms. Palin and her husband found out what was going on, the machine of keep the child and take the vows was surely kicked into gear independent of anything Bristol might have had to say about it). No. What I was struck by, in the conversation, was the awkwardness of it all.

There were great gaps and holes in the conversation, the echoic rush of radio static as no guest had anything to say. There was no energy to the conversation, and virtually no substance. Nobody was even talking about why Ms. Palin had been chosen, beyond the suggestion that there was a pandering to disaffected Clinton supporter. Nobody seemed to know what, if anything, to say—for these Feminists to note that Ms. Palin has a breathtakingly thin resume, for example, would be an attack on the idea that women can reach positions of power. For these Feminists to speak of Ms. Palin’s Beauty-Queen past, and to note that there is an odd way that her aesthetic appeal seems central to both her career and her candidacy would be to attack a woman on the basis of appearance the way that many did so deplorably during the Clinton run. And so the panel talked and talked and evaded anything uncomfortable, and nothing of significance got said.

I’ve used this example once before, but it’s too perfect not to offer here: when I taught a class examining the role of Miss America in creating the ideal of the American woman, I once had a frat boy get worked up and say, “It’s just not fair that people don’t think women can be beautiful and smart!” What he was missing was of course the bigger point: a woman shouldn’t have to runway walk in a swimsuit before she can take a stage and be heard. Ms. Clinton was a serious figure, which explains a lot of the hatred directed her way: “She’s a castrating bitch,” was one of the more telling slurs directed at her—ie, she insisted on arguing with men as an equal, which meant they couldn’t act like men. When Ms. Palin went on the attack against Mr. Obama in her speech to the Convention, the crowd went wild, and I knew something was wrong in her tone, her presentation, all of it. Ms. Palin is not, surely not a ‘castrating bitch’—she’s a mean beauty queen, the attractive and traditional Christian mom, who rejects that dark-skinned fellow with the un-American name. I once heard a psychologist say that while a woman’s deepest fear of men is that they will rape or murder them, a man’s greatest fear of women is rejection. I’m not saying that Mr. Obama ‘feels’ rejected by Ms. Palin, but rather that having her, the ‘pretty’ girl, turn him down has a strange force. The Republican ticket has become the All-American grandfather parading out his cute young niece—to battle the forces of Otherness. The choice of Ms. Palin restores all the ugliest aspects of the race versus gender war, except now the woman is ‘appropriately’ hot and stands for the ‘right’ things-- things which just happen to invoke every cultural wedge issue at once: abortion and teen pregnancy, guns, the separation of church and state.

This race will be an ugly one, and quite honestly, Ms. Palin is a formidable foe not because of her intellect (I’m not saying she’s not smart) but because of demographics and aesthetics. I know that the properly post-feminist argument here would be to say it’s all fine and well and good—she should be able to use her gender to whatever advantage she wants, to ‘objectify’ herself in her own favor, and in doing so, demonstrate intelligence through that calculation. Perhaps that’s why, on that NPR radio show, nobody knew what to say. I’m not particularly partisan, but the last seven years has made it impossible to believe that elections don’t matter or that politicians are all the same. Voters let subconscious factors make their decisions for them, and the Palin choice is a doozy of a factor—on the basis of a latent sexism that suggests the attractive woman should be kowtowed to, voters get a free pass on their latent racism. Somebody needs to lift their voice, and say what isn’t comfortable before it’s too late.

*Vagina Dentata from Wikipedia.org

The vagina dentata appears in the myths of several cultures. Erich Neumann relays one such myth in which “A fish inhabits the vagina of the Terrible Mother; the hero is the man who overcomes the Terrible Mother, breaks the teeth out of her vagina, and so makes her into a woman.”[1]

The myth appears for example in the second of the three sequences of founding Maori myths, where the hero, Māui, has to enter the goddess of night and death Hinenuitepo through her toothed vagina to try and pluck her heart, in an attempt to make mankind immortal. He fails and becomes the first man to die.[2]

The legend also appears in the mythology of the Chaco and Guiana tribes. In some versions, the hero leaves one tooth.[3]

In his book, The Wimp Factor, Stephen J. Ducat expresses the view that these myths express the threat sexual intercourse poses for men who, although entering triumphantly, always leave diminished. The myth is also popularized in the movie Teeth, starring Jess Weixler.[4]

The vagina dentata has proven a captivating image for many artists and writers, particularly among surrealist or psychoanalytic works. Although the myth is associated with the fear of castration, it is often falsely attributed to Sigmund Freud. Freud never mentions the term in any of his psychoanalytic work and it runs counter to his own ideas about castration. For Freud, the vagina signifies the fear of castration because the young (male) child assumes that women once had a penis that is now absent.[5] The vagina, then, is the result of castration, not the cause of it.

1 Neumann, Erich; translated by Ralph Manheim (1955). The Great Mother. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 168.
2 Maori Mythology, Aotearoa
3 Leach, Maria (1972). "vagina dentata", Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, entry by Erminie W. Voegelin, New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1152. ISBN 0308400909.
4 Ducat, Stephen J. (2004). The Wimp Factor. Boston: Beacon Press, 115-149.
5 Simon, B. (1991). Cambridge Companion to Freud: The development and vicissitudes of Freud's ideas on the Oedipus Complex. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Affirmative Action for Attractive White Females

Since she is so average, and VP's aren't supposed to be average (unless you look like Dan Quayle) - she can be a great textbook case on Affirmative Action for Attractive White Females.  

Reasons why some people think Palin is a great VP choice

1.    She has a child who is disabled.

2.    She has a pregnant teenage daughter who didn't have an abortion.

3.    She has a son going to Iraq.

4.    She has a working class husband who didn't go to college.

5.    She is very pretty.

6.    Her husband is very handsome.

7.    She knows how to use a rifle.

8.    She thinks is it ok to thin out the wolf population in Alaska, and likes stuffed animals who

       used to be alive.

9.    She will be attractive to heavy meat eaters.

10.  She has good legs.

11.   She will keep McCain entertained, and maybe alive longer.* 

12.  She can be easily convinced to do something irrational -

       since accepting the VP offer with such limited qualifications is egotistical and shows poor

       judgement

13.  Drilling in protected land is ok with her. 

14.  She is so average, McCain won't be jealous of her intelligence.

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Archive for Wednesday, September 03, 2008
When average isn’t good enough

She’s not qualified to be president, and in picking her, McCain shows that he has little respect for the presidency.

By Sam Harris
September 03, 2008 in print edition A-21
Opinion
Los Angeles Times

So let us ask the question that should be on the mind of every thinking person in the world at this moment: If John McCain becomes the 44th president of the United States, what are the odds that a blood clot or falling object will make Sarah Palin the 45th?

The actuarial tables on the Social Security Administration website suggest that there is a better than 10% chance that McCain will die during his first term in office. Needless to say, the Reaper’s scything only grows more insistent thereafter. Should President McCain survive his first term and get elected to a second, there is a 27% chance that Palin will become the first female U.S. president by 2015. If we take into account McCain’s medical history and the pressures of the presidency, the odds probably increase considerably that this bright-eyed Alaskan will become the most powerful woman in history.

As many people have noted, placing Palin on the ticket has made these final months of the already overlong 2008 campaign much more interesting. Is Palin remotely qualified to be president of the United States? No. But that’s precisely what is so interesting. McCain not only has thrown all sensible concerns about good governance aside merely to pander to a sliver of female and masses of conservative Christian voters, he has turned this period of American history into an episode of high-stakes reality television: Don’t look now, but our cousin Sarah just became leader of the free world! Tune in next week and watch her get sassy with Pakistan!

Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority. No one wants an average neurosurgeon or even an average carpenter, but when it comes time to vest a man or woman with more power and responsibility than any person has held in human history, Americans say they want a regular guy, someone just like themselves. President Bush kept his edge on the “Who would you like to have a beer with?” poll question in 2004, and won reelection.

This is one of the many points at which narcissism becomes indistinguishable from masochism. Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get. You deserve to be poor, to see the environment despoiled, to watch your children receive a fourth-rate education and to suffer as this country wages – and loses – both necessary and unnecessary wars.

McCain has so little respect for the presidency of the United States that he is willing to put the girl next door (soon, too, to be a grandma) into office beside him. He has so little respect for the average American voter that he thinks this reckless and cynical ploy will work.

And it might. Palin’s nomination has clearly excited Christian conservatives, and it may entice a few million gender-obsessed fans of Hillary Clinton to vote entirely on the basis of chromosomes. Throw in a few million more average Americans who will just love how the nice lady smiles, and 2009 could be a very interesting year.

Tune in next week and watch cousin Sarah fuss with our nuclear arsenal … .

Sam Harris is a founder of the Reason Project and the author of “The End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation.”

for link to LAT article click here


*don't older men live longer if their partners are much younger?
link to photo

How the Christian ULTRA-right Mugged John McCain

McCain wasn't the one who made the decision on Palin. It was James Dobson. (just kidding)

What do we know about these organizations?

Focus on the Family

Alaska Independence Party

Council for National Policy

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Report: Secretive Right Wing Vetted McCain's VP Candidate Sarah Palin.
Democracy Now
September 2, 2008

Amy Goodman interviewing Mx Blumenthal of The Nation magazine

...last week in Minneapolis at the Radisson Hotel, without any media present, the most powerful power brokers of the Christian right met and essentially vetted Sarah Palin. They were there to watch her speech accepting her selection as the vice-presidential candidate. And they were delighted.

The only way I found out about this meeting is through a web video posted by the Christian right organization Focus on the Family, in which they discussed attending the meeting. One of James Dobson’s spokesmen discussed attending the meeting and being electrified by the selection of Sarah Palin. The Christian right absolutely loves this woman. And so—and what I wrote in my article is that the Council for National Policy is sort of the hidden hand behind the selection.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain who is in this council.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Right. And it’s hard to know who is in this Council for National Policy. What it is is an umbrella group of the most powerful figures in the Christian right; the biggest donors of the right wing; the activists, like Grover Norquist, anti-tax activist; people like Erik Prince from Blackwater and his family; people—

AMY GOODMAN: He’s a part of the council.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yes. Paul Weyrich, the Catholic right organizer; Tim LaHaye, author of the best—“Left Behind” series; James Dobson and his entire family are in this. You know—

AMY GOODMAN: James Dobson, who said pray for rain during the Democratic convention.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Exactly, exactly, and who thinks SpongeBob is gay, and who I consider the most powerful figure in the Christian right, by the way. And—but remember—

AMY GOODMAN: So they all met, as the Democrats were in Denver, in Minneapolis.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Right. They all met—exactly. And the point of meeting while the media was focusing on the Democrats was so that the media wouldn’t, you know, detect this meeting, because they want to make—they want to plan for the long term without any—you know, outside of the spotlight. Their membership rolls are completely secret.

And so, that’s part of the reason why the selection of Sarah Palin caught people off guard, because John McCain had always been seen as a maverick who defied right-wing orthodoxy, and it was hard for the media to imagine that he would make such a radical selection for vice president, someone who would actually be the liaison to the Christian right in his administration. She wouldn’t play a role like Dick Cheney, where she, you know, has any influence over foreign policy. She would control the agencies like Health and Human Services and block condom distribution to Africa, block sex education in public schools, things like that.

AMY GOODMAN: So, are you saying that this whole questioning of, oh, is this really being done to attract Hillary delegates, is way off base, that this is about shoring up the evangelical base?

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, this never would have happened if Barack Obama had selected Hillary Clinton as his vice president, that’s for sure. He would have selected Romney or Pawlenty, the Minnesota governor. And if McCain is elected president, you’re going to have another radical administration, in part because Barack Obama was afraid of being overshadowed by the Clintons.

But this has nothing to do with attracting Hillary supporters. And the Hillary supporters I’ve spoken to are actually offended by this pick, because most of them are feminists who are pro-choice.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you learn of this secret gathering?

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Right. I saw a web video posted on Focus on the Family, where they mentioned in—where the spokesman for James Dobson, Tom Minnery, mentioned in passing that he had attended this gathering the week prior and that all of these power brokers—I don’t know who was there, because they kept it secret—had watched—you know, had met to watch Sarah Palin and discuss her and that they were electrified by her selection. And they feel now that they can support a McCain administration.

So James Dobson, the most powerful figure in the Christian right, who had said—who had earlier vowed that he could never vote for John McCain, I expect to endorse John McCain and to play an enormous role in this campaign. He has 3.5 million members. He has thirty-six policy councils in the States. His organization has a $150 million budget.

So, McCain is doing this in part to get the—to channel the grassroots muscle of the Christian right into an electoral victory over Barack Obama. And I think, you know, anyone who dismisses Sarah Palin’s lack of experience or her seeming shallowness on policy, you know, should not underestimate her, because this is—there’s a larger story here, and it’s about, you know, winning this election by pandering to the Christian right.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, the Alaska delegation in the context of—in the political spectrum in comparison with all the Republican delegations that are here this week?

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Right. Well, I mean, you can clearly see how radical most of the members of this delegation are through my video. Those three people I spoke to were indicative of, you know, the—you know, all of the interviews I did. Many of them are Ron Paul supporters—excuse me—Buchananites, people who identify with the far fringes of the radical right.

And Sarah Palin, herself, is a member of a party called the Alaska Independence Party, which has endorsed seceding from the union and may have ties to other neosecessionist groups, like the Vermont—excuse me—Independence Party, which themselves have ties to neo-Confederate groups. So you’re talking about, you know, a state far off in the hinterlands, where people deeply mistrust government, where they—you know, where they have a, you know, very radical ideology on social policy. And we’ve never had a candidate from that state elevated to this position. So I think this is unique, and at the same time it’s typical, because the Republican Party, through John McCain, is intent on continuing the social policies of George W. Bush, which have been disastrous.

AMY GOODMAN: And now, James Dobson said he would never support John McCain—

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: —has reversed his position.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, he said he may support him. And now I expect him to actually support him and throw the full weight of his organization behind John McCain.

AMY GOODMAN: Max Blumenthal, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Of course, people can watch that video on our website, and we’ll link to yours. Max Blumenthal of The Nation magazine.

Pro-Lifers will love Palin for not pushing an abortion on her daughter, but "this is not funny anymore"

Amidst all the chaos regarding Governor Palin's daughter pregnancy, there might be a ray of sunshine for pro-lifers... they might be happy to have a VP that didn't force her child to have an abortion.

I must say however, it takes a pretty heartless Mom to enter a grueling political campaign that encourages attack and insult while her 17 year old daughter is in such a state.

Bristol is the one that needs empathy these days. No adolescent should have to go through a pregnancy while the country is looking at her with a thick pair of moral eyeglasses. Her mother should have known better.

p.s. I tried to find a photo of a pregnant Sarah Palin (not Bristol) and couldn't find one on the net.

 See Would You Do That to Your Daughter? from Washington Post
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GOP Deals with the Storm and the Stork
By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, September 2, 2008; A18

ST. PAUL, Minn., Sept. 1 ... Scores of them [reporters] surrounded Steve Schmidt, McCain's senior adviser, as he walked through the media area outside the convention hall.

"Was it good judgment to select Sarah Palin, given her daughter's situation? . . . Why didn't you just say it, Steve, at the time when you picked her? . . . Did this question of how she will handle and balance her own personal responsibilities with the responsibilities of running the country come up?"

Schmidt sparred, parried and fled. "I've got to run," he told the mob. "Not like this isn't fun."

And the storm surge was just beginning. As the waves of Hurricane Bristol crashed over the arena, another tropical depression was forming on the Christian Broadcasting Network, which reported that Palin's husband, Todd, was charged with drunken driving two decades ago. Meteorologists were also watching the rotation on Tropical Storm Trooper -- the flap over the attempt to fire an Alaska officer who is divorced from Palin's sister.

To Democrats, this all added evidence to their thesis that the Republicans are suffering divine retribution. On Friday night, filmmaker Michael Moore told MSNBC that "Gustav is proof that there is a God in heaven." Former Democratic National Committee chairman Don Fowler had also said that Gustav "just demonstrates that God is on our side." He apologized.

Then again, in sending the deluge to the Gulf Coast, God may have merely misunderstood the request of Republicans, who had sought meteorological interference of their own. A group associated with Focus on the Family's James Dobson had posted a video asking people to pray for "rain of biblical proportions" to wash out Democrat Barack Obama's open-air speech in Denver last week.

Republicans have a history of such practices. The late Rev. Jerry Falwell blamed 9/11 on "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays." The Rev. John Hagee said Hurricane Katrina was "the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans." And the Rev. Pat Robertson threatened Orlando with "earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor" for displaying gay-pride flags.

McCain, however, sought the help of a less vengeful God when he said, as Gustav approached, that "we pray to God that it will spare" Gulf Coast residents. As for the convention, he said, "some of that is frankly in the hands of God."
.
..Off the floor, the talk was all about the day's man-made storm, Hurricane Bristol -- or, as some were unkindly calling Palin's daughter, the Juno of Juneau.

As the news spread across the arena, the Republicans canceled their daily news briefing. Spokesman Tucker Bounds, in a laudable bit of spin, explained how Palin now "may be the most qualified expert on any campaign on family issues."

Schmidt, ambushed as he strolled through the media area, got progressively angrier as the mob around him grew. Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times asked about the feasibility of Palin being a vice president with "a new baby herself, and now she's about to be a new grandmother trying to support a daughter giving birth to her own child."

Schmidt replied: "Frankly, I can't imagine that question being asked of a man. A lot of women will find it offensive."

Jackie Calmes, also of the Times, asked Schmidt whether he worried about "turning off some of the women you wanted to appeal to who will question the judgment of Senator McCain and Governor Palin that they would subject a 17-year-old's pregnancy out of wedlock to international attention?"

"They have asked for privacy," said Schmidt, whose colleagues had just sent out the press release announcing the pregnancy.
...

a few comments from the Wall Street Journal article on the Palins.

O MUCH FOR FAMILY VALUES. MINORS HAVING BABIES!! BETTER YET BABIES HAVING BABIES!!!
Comment by DANNY - September 1, 2008 at 1:09 pm

Why is this relevant? Because this woman wants to push her pro-life, anti-contraception, abstinence only policies on the rest of us.
Comment by JAG - September 1, 2008 at 1:11 pm

this is good. It shows family values. Of course having an R next to her name helps!
Comment by sean Hannity - September 1, 2008 at 1:13 pm

Straight forward; no denailes, no recriminations abd, afterall, it is their own personal family afair of which we should not make ourselves a part of.
Comment by Anonymous - September 1, 2008 at 1:14 pm

Should Levi be arrested for having sex with underaged?
Comment by post - September 1, 2008 at 1:16 pm

This campaign will go down as the weirdest EVER in political history…as if politics wasn’t weird enough…
Comment by anonymous - September 1, 2008 at 1:16 pm

Bristol is pregnant at seventeen? What does Levi do?
When did mom and dad Palin know?
Why did they not tell McCain?
Was Sarah too busy being a “governor” to speak to her daughter and teach her something about the birds and the bees?
This is not about the girl, is about the hypocrisy of the mother.
Her irresponsibility with her children shows she is not fully qualified to be a parent.
But people think she is qualified to be the Vice President for a dying old man?
This is not funny anymore…
Comment by Not funny anymore. - September 1, 2008 at 1:16 pm

Cindy McCain: Palin has Foreign Policy experience with Russia because it is so close to Alaska

Did Mrs. McCain complete high school?

Beauty Queens and the Glass Ceiling

Twenty years ago in another life, I used to love to shop at the Houston's Galleria.  That beautiful wool and silk suit at Lord & Taylor was my goal.  After a few years I had lots of them.

As the years went by and I left a well paying career for academia, I began to realize that I didn't have to look like a Barbie doll to be successful.  Part of the pressure came from being a woman in the United States.  We all know that being a gorgeous size 4 gets us almost anywhere these days.

The other is being of Mexican descent, and having spent a few years living in Mexico in the late 90s, I realized that women south of the Rio Grande not only had to be very attractive, they had to wear their sexuality as a mask - complete with the most expensive make-up they could afford (that by the way was purchased at Houston's Galleria).

I guess I am still somewhat vain.  I worry about my weight, - ask my 26 year old daughter what type of clothes won't make me look too matronly.  But the days of the wool-silk suits and expensive high heel shoes are over.  No more scrambling in the morning to fix my hair and put on eye makeup.  

There have been drawbacks - my second cousin in Monterrey, Mexico once asked me, "What happened to you?  You used to be so pretty?  Your eyes used to be so big?"  - She wasn't asking me this because I was so wrinkled or fat.  At that time I was basically as I had been in my early 30s in those respects.  She asked the question because I no longer "dressed up" - and put on eye make-up.

It is true that men no longer stop me to say something nice - mostly I don't miss that.  I was once told I looked like a Barbie doll - the more I thought about that comment the more I realized that being told I look like an inanimate object is no compliment.

Now that I am into the comfortable shoe phase I bask in being respected for the books I write, the conversations I have, and the intellectual community I belong to.  Yes, my husband thinks I'm pretty, but thank goodness his opinion is not based on my spending thousands of dollars a year on clothes  and make-up.

A few days ago I was interviewed by a group of young people from Mexico City - they had traveled to Los Angeles and Houston to interview successful Latinas - after having interviewed some successful women in Mexico.  They were shocked when I told them that in graduate school the women wore minimal if any makeup and didn't wear high heels (in the late 90s).  I told them that there were often comments that women who took on these trappings were seen as less serious intellectually.  Plus, it is so much more comfortable to work 18 hour days at a computer if you aren't wearing pointed toe spikes.

Bringing us to our current news of Sarah Palin being nominated for VP - I am fairly sure that McCain and his buddies had the beauty queen thing on their minds when they picked Sarah. Maybe they think that being like Barbie is the only way to break the glass. What a shame.

link to image

Palin as VP? Rove Must Have Been Asleep

If McCain were to be elected and the moment arose that Palin would have to take over, I might consider moving to some isolated area in Montana and hope not to see any other human beings for a while.

If someone believes that being the Mayor of a suburb with a population of 8,000 people is enough to prepare one for the presidency, then they have lost their marbles. Looks like Palin already has by accepting McCain's deranged offer.

Perhaps all of this has come about because of the GOPs desperation - they know they are in trouble, and have resorted to schemes that would make even Karl Rove shudder.

a few thoughts on Palin:

while Hillary is not my favorite person - I must say, Palin is no Hillary Clinton -

as for luck less VP candidates - Palin makes Dan Quayle look good. 

Does anyone see similarities to GHW Bush's pick of Clarence Thomas for Supreme Court?

P.S. turns out Rove wasn't asleep after all.  McCain just ignored him - see Huffington Post article by S.Blumenthal "Why Palin? McCain vs. Rove"
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Mr. McCain's Choice
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has some appealing qualities. But could she step in as president?
Saturday, August 30, 2008; A22

Washington Post Editorial

AT FIRST GLANCE, there appears to be much to admire in Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, Sen. John McCain's choice as his vice presidential running mate. Just 44 years old, she is a talented and upbeat person who excelled in basketball and beauty pageants, music and moose hunting. Since entering politics she has shown independence and a clear moral compass. On Alaska's oil and gas commission, she blew the whistle on a fellow Republican's conflict of interest. Her 2006 campaign for the state's highest office began as an insurrection against her party's old guard. In choosing her, Mr. McCain said that Ms. Palin's experience equips her to help "shake up Washington."

There is no surprise in the fact that Ms. Palin is a conservative on the issues that matter most to the Republican Party's base. She is an opponent of abortion and a particularly outspoken advocate of letting oil and gas companies drill on public lands -- including Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a position that not even Mr. McCain, who favors offshore drilling, has embraced. But politically, Mr. McCain's choice was a stunner. He bypassed safer choices, such as Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, in favor of a relative unknown.

Now Mr. McCain can say he is giving voters a chance to make history by electing the first woman to be vice president. He is also hoping Ms. Palin's down-to-earth "hockey mom" persona will appeal to those working-class Democrats, especially women, who voted for Sen. Hillary Clinton in the primary -- though many supporters of abortion rights may be insulted by that proposition.

But the most important question Mr. McCain should have asked himself about Ms. Palin was not whether she could help him win the presidency. It was whether she is qualified and prepared to serve as president should anything prevent him from doing so. This would have been true for any presidential nominee, and it was especially crucial that Mr. McCain -- who turns 72 today -- get this choice right. If he is elected, he will be the oldest man ever to serve a first term in the White House.

In this regard, count us among the puzzled and the skeptical. Not long ago, no less a Republican strategist than Karl Rove belittled Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine as a potential running mate for Barack Obama, noting that picking him would appear "intensely political" because Mr. Kaine's experience consisted of only three years as governor preceded by the mayoralty of Richmond, which Mr. Rove called "not a big town."

Using Mr. Rove's criteria, Ms. Palin would not fare well. Her executive experience consists of less than two years as governor of her sparsely populated state, plus six years as mayor of Wasilla (pop. 8,471). Absorbed in Alaska's unique energy and natural resource issues, she has barely been heard from in the broader national debates over economic policy and health care. Above all, she has no record on foreign policy and national security -- including terrorism, which Mr. McCain posits as the top challenge facing America and the world. Once the buzz over Ms. Palin's nomination dies down, the hard questions about her will begin. The answers will reflect on her qualifications -- and on Mr. McCain's judgment as well.

for link to WaPo editorial click here

link to photo

Our potential VP in Vogue

Sarah Palin on the cover of Vogue


sorry, I couldn't resist

The Word on McCain from London

I just saw the McNeil Lehrer Report discussing Obama at the Democratic convention.... how in the world can anyone compare Gov. Palin, a former beauty queen, to Obama, a Harvard Law School Graduate, who was president of the Harvard Law Review? - the journalist from Pennsylvania who angrily said both Palin and Obama were equally not experienced must have been asleep when he was speaking. 

The woman journalist from Tampa said that Michelle Obama was a liability to her husband because she was seen as aggressive and assertive? Since when are women supposed to be quiet? Especially a woman with an Ivy League legal education?

The woman from Tampa reminded me of those things I read when I was researching the cemetery book - like the 1936 University of Texas dissertation on plantations in Texas that said a certain black state representative from Texas (in the 1890s) was too assertive and haughty.

Truthfully, both parties fudge and play their games, but these kind of maneuvers are disgusting.

If Palin is only a heartbeat away from the Oval Office, you can take it another way, considering McCain's history with women, his wife should be careful.

a word from the London Guardian:

click here to see video on the Guardian's response to McCain's choice of running mate. 

P.S. Take a look at Palin's 2008 hairdo, it looks like the hair of a woman belonging to the Jehovah's Witnesses (or similar fundamentalist religious denomination)

.

first photo - Sarah Palin in 1984

second photo - John McCain in 1973

third photo - Sarah Palin